[85]
25. Those who propose to take charge of the1
affairs of government should not fail to remember two
of Plato's rules: first, to keep the good of the people
so clearly in view that regardless of their own interests they will make their every action conform to
that; second, to care for the welfare of the whole
body politic and not in serving the interests of some2
one party to betray the rest. For the administration of the government, like the office of a trustee,
must be conducted for the benefit of those entrusted
to one's care, not of those to whom it is entrusted.
Now, those who care for the interests of a part of
the citizens and neglect another part, introduce
into the civil service a dangerous element—dissension and party strife. The result is that some
are found to be loyal supporters of the democratic,
others of the aristocratic party, and few of the nation
as a whole.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.